UNCTAD provides intellectual leadership and serves as a source of expertise on science, technology and innovation (STI) and information and communication technologies (ICTs) policies for development.

UNCTAD’s activities in this area seek to bring the development perspective to international discussions, supporting consensus-building and capacity-building for sound, evidence-based, development-oriented policy in relevant areas.

STI, including ICTs, are an essential component of policies to promote development. They can serve as instruments for supporting relevant components of the national development agenda, helping local industry compete, generating better paying jobs, reducing poverty, promoting export diversification and catching up.

However, the assimilation, diffusion and application of scientific and technological knowledge require investments in human and physical capital, together with the establishment and nurturing of a national innovation system and a systematic effort to access and use relevant knowledge. Policies at the national and international levels are needed to organize and sustain those processes.

A new report from UNCTAD finds that the Islamic Republic of Iran has greatly improved its science, technology and innovation capacity over the past decade. However, policy action can further improve the country's ability to harness the full potential of STI as an instrument to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Policy makers can be a bridge between people who are passionate about ideas and a place where those ideas can be implemented, says Ticora Jones, whose work links up universities and local communities looking to technology to address development challenges. Ms. Jones was speaking at the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development, convened by UNCTAD in Geneva, Switzerland, on 23-25 January.

It is becoming clearer that tackling urgent development challenges like access to affordable homes and clean water requires mixing and matching traditional and non-traditional sources of innovation and investment. UVI Research and Technology Park Executive Director Gillian Marcelle, whose varied career spans academia, commerce and development agencies, visited the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development, convened by UNCTAD on 23-25 January, to spell out how she sees the way forward.

What does innovation have to do with reducing poverty? Participants at a meeting of the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development, convened by UNCTAD, on 23-25 January heard many answers, among them the concept of frugal or jugaad innovation. But what is that? One of its foremost proponents Jaideep Prabhu, co-author with Navi Radjou of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, explained.